On My Mind; Just Miles Away

By A. M. Rosenthal

Published: December 5, 1997

The duty of President Clinton is to warn against possible threats to U.S. interests arising thousands of miles from American shores.

The duty of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to protect the Israeli nation and its people from neighboring armies that have attacked three times before. The existence of the state and the lives of its people are measured in a few miles and minutes, the height of a hill or the distance across a single valley.

Mr. Clinton is failing to do his job in the Mideast. Faced with Saddam rising, Iraq and Iran arming with nuclear and biological weapons and Russia stabbing America, he targets Israel as blocking Mideast peace. This watchman ignores the thugs entering the house and floodlights a rabbit trying to find a shelter-hole.

When Mr. Clinton fails in his duty, Americans in their safety barely notice. If Mr. Netanyahu fails in his duty Israelis will notice, as they die.

In those four paragraphs lie the reason that what sometimes seems like intransigence to Americans is survival to Israelis.

Security, to the Israeli Government, means control of its border areas. In the east it wants a 12-mile zone in the Jordan River Valley, which it controls now.

If Arab armies led by Iraq and Syria attack, they are likely to go through Jordan. They took that route in 1948 when they captured the West Bank, which is supposed to be the new Palestinian state. They took the same route in 1967 when they lost it all to Israel. They will try to intimidate or remove King Hussein. He knows Israeli control of the valley is his protection against Palestinians, the hostile majority of his country.

Israeli air power could not wipe out earlier invasions; that was done largely on the ground. A rejuvenated Iraq would need 36 hours to cross Jordan into Israel -- 12 hours less than Israel needs to mobilize. Iraq alone will have dozens of divisions more than it did previously. It will have the help of Palestinian forces.

But Arab divisions would have to cross into Israel from an area 1,200 feet below sea level and then fight up into hills and passes 3,000 feet high. The Arabs swept over the hills when Israel was not in control of the area. Israel does not intend to be without that 4,200-foot defensive wall again, or spend Israeli lives in recapturing it.

On the Mediterranean, just an hour's drive from the Jordan River, are Tel Aviv and other cities, where 70 percent of Israel's population lives. Israel will demand a six-mile-wide buffer zone to help protect them -- and an underground water supply. Large as the Sea of Galilee, this aquifer provides drinking water to 40 percent of Israelis.

To American Jews who denounce and try to destroy the Israeli Government for reasons of politics or religious practice: Think, six miles. And think: Without the buffers, Israel would be back against the borders that invited the Arab annihilation attempt of 1967. The Israeli Army has security-based maps drawn up, largely corresponding to the work of Ariel Sharon, an Israeli asset of endurance and sophistication.

All this does not mean Israel would surrender all the rest of the West Bank, and no, not Jerusalem. But with U.S. acceptance of and pressure for the buffers could come room for negotiations. Palestinians would have all the cities of the West Bank, and much of the land. And they would have a state; Labor created it at Oslo.

But further land transfer would depend on Yasir Arafat fulfilling his promises of reciprocity -- particularly his broken promises to destroy the leadership of terrorism. The U.S. gave Israel its written support on that, on Jan. 17, 1997.

Israel has not decided how specific it should be now about security zones, or how much additional territory it would give up in the next withdrawal of Israeli troops, or its plan for the final deal Mr. Netanyahu wants to speed.

With disclosure Mr. Netanyahu will lose some leverage with the Palestinians -- and create trouble among Israelis passionately against any more concessions at all.

But I think Israel would gain something increasingly important. Americans would understand what Israel cannot give up without inviting another invasion by the same armies that attacked before, and are rebuilding their strength, miles, minutes and a valley away.